Dave Balderstone wrote:

In article , Robert Bonomi
wrote:

How many acres of farmland does it take to produce say, 1,000 barrels of
either ethanol or biodiesel?

That's a good question, and I've throw it to at one of our senior
reporters at work (farm newspaper) to see if they know the answer.
.....

As a followup I sent a query to the National Biodiesel Board...here's
the response...

Biodiesel has a positive energy balance when compared to petroleum diesel
fuel. A life cycle study conducted by the Departments of Energy and
Agriculture showed that for every unit of fossil energy needed to produce
biodiesel you get 3.2 units of energy out. Biodiesel has one of the highest
energy balances of any renewable fuel.

Over the last five years average soybean yield in the US was 38.4 bushels
per acre. Each bushel of soybeans produces approximately 1.44 gallons of
biodiesel. Therefore, an acre of soybeans could yield just over 55 gallons
of biodiesel.

Extrapolating on basis of 31.5 gal/bbl, that would convert to something
under 600 A/1000 bbl, higher than the estimate for ethanol from corn,
but still, there are millions of actres in production and additional
acres can easily be devoted if needed.